Great day, great day, the righteous marching,

Great day; Gods gonna build up Zions walls.

Chariot rode on the mountaintop,
God, He spoke and the chariot stop.
This the day of Jubilee,
God done set His people free!
Take my breastplate, sword in hand,
March out boldly through the land,
Want no cowards in our band,
Each must be a good, brave man.
Great day, great day the righteous marching,
Great day; Gods gonna build up Zions walls.
I am the joy and the pride of my maternal grandmother,
looking out over a front yard overfowing with grandchildren. I
am the steady and stern glance of my paternal grandfather, and the
upbeat whistle pushing past my fathers lips as he enjoys a ride in
his very frst car, that green, two-door Chevrolet. I am the warmth
of my mother as she speaks the letters of the word Mississippi in
In the Beginning
GREAT DAY!
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rhythm, her special way of making spelling lessons more fun. They
are all in my DNA: their beautiful blood, rich with the determina-
tion, the songs, the hope, the heartbreak, and the strength of my
people, stretching back past the cocoon of my childhood home in
Augusta, Georgia, beyond the most storied of concert halls, beyond
the earths surface, beyond, even, the nurturing glow of the African
sun. Because they were, I am.
My ancestors gift of song rustled the leaves of gnarled south-
ern oaks and pines, whispered between the rows of the felds they
tilled, danced in the winds just beyond the oceans ripple, above the
waters that brought my people and my blood to these shores. I am
all who have made me: Mother Africa, the hills of Georgia, and
these United States. My gift is uniquely my own, and yet it is also
all of this. I pay homage to those who nurtured and nourished me.
I stretch out and wrap my arms around them all.
There was always music, always. When we were small children,
we would visit my mothers parents on their farm, where Grandma
Mamies voice would fll the quiet spaces. I loved to hear her sing.
She had songs for every time of the day. Of course, when we kids
were there, the quiet spaces were few, especially if we found our
way to the organ. My grandparents were the only people I ever
knew who had one a grand pedal organ, or more accurately, a
harmonium right there in their house. It lived over in the corner
of the front room, and I remember thinking that it was the most
exotic thing I had ever encountered in my entire life. As far as I can
recall, we were never stopped from playing it, nor admonished for
disturbing the adults. My brothers Silas Jr. and Howard and I were
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too small to play the keyboard and work the pedals all at the same
time; there just wasnt enough body on any one of the three of us
to do so. But that did not stop us from trying. The knobs that indi-
cated various stops were new to us, and that was part of the fun. By
pulling one of them out, we changed the sound coming from the
keys. It was too good to be true. We had all begun our piano les-
sons, so the keyboards of the instrument were familiar. There was
something for each of us to do with that majestic box of wood and
veneer, and the two rows of ivory and ebony that produced such
magic. So we would split the duties: the boys would be responsible
for the keys and I took the pedals, with the grand promise of recip-
rocation once it was my turn to fnger a tune (or more likely simply
press the keys down in no particular pattern, just for the thrill of
it). I worked hard. I made sure the boys were having a great time
on the keys while I stooped at the bottom of the bench and used my
hands to make the pedals work and work. Of course, when it came
time for me to play the keys, my brothers always found a reason to
be somewhere else. No surprises there. Grandma Mamie, fve feet
ten in her stocking feet, with a mass of glorious white hair and Na-
tive American beauty dancing across her strong cheekbones and
chestnut-colored skin, would just laugh; she never chastised the
boys for leaving me on my own. And I did not really mind, either,
as I could then have the magic box all to myself!
One could tell Grandma Mamies mood by the songs she sang
or hummed. It was very easy to do, even as a child. I always say that
young children are as sensitive to mood swings as family puppies.
Whatever you are feeling, they can sense it. I could tell just from
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her choice of song whether she was having a happy morning or
whether her thoughts were uneasy. Happy moods brought offer-
ings that were more spry, such as In That Great Gettin Up Morn-
ing, Hallelu, Hallelu. If you woke up from a peaceful slumber and
heard her humming a tune like that, you knew instantly that this
particular morning was good. Things were going well. By contrast,
a slower, deeper, more mournful song, such as the hymn Precious
Lord, Take My Hand, indicated that Grandma Mamie was think-
ing about something, and that something was not bringing her joy
at that particular moment. Whether happy or melancholy, whether
we rejoiced with her or worried for her, Grandmas singing was
always beautiful, deeply soulful, and right.
I was much too young to understand fully the depth of infu-
ence her singing had on me. All I knew was that I loved to look
at her and to hear her voice. Years later, my heart and, perhaps, a
bit of cellular memory made clear that the songs and phrases that
lived in Grandma Mamies breath, and the passion and emotion
that fowed from her very core, had found their way into my young
spirit. This became wonderfully apparent during a performance in
2000 of my production of the sacred music of Duke Ellington that I
call Sacred Ellington. This took place in the beautiful Episcopal Ca-
thedral in Philadelphia. I was accompanied on the piano by Mark
Markham, a fne jazz band, and the dancer Margie Gillis, and was
having quite a marvelous time with the audience when I decided I
would add a couple of Spirituals as encores. That afternoon, I of-
fered one of my favorites: Theres a Man Going Round Taking
Names, a song popularized in the early twentieth century by the
folk singer Lead Belly.
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Theres a man going round taking names.
Theres a man going round taking names.
He has taken my fathers name,
And hes left my heart in pain.
Theres a man going round taking names. . . .
To this day, I have no idea what came over me when, with-
out thinking, I walked down from the stage and began moving
through the aisles, taking in the faces of all who were there and re-
ally connecting with each individual as I sang and glided through
this deeply sacred space.
I had never done that before in my life.
It was not until after the concert, as my family and friends gath-
ered to celebrate the birthday of my older brother, Silas Jr., that it
was revealed why, exactly, I had broken with normal protocol and
left the stage and gone into the aisles. It was Silas who made me un-
derstand. Theres no way that you could possibly remember this,
he said simply as we sat together at dinner. You were too young.
Remember what? I asked.
That Grandma Mamie would get up from her pew at the
church on Sunday mornings and sing Spirituals as she walked
around the entire church, Silas said, referring to Hilliard Station
Baptist Church in Washington, Georgia. She used these moments
to greet her neighbors and just enjoy offering her singing so freely
to everyone.
For a moment, we were silent. You can imagine that this rev-
elation sent chills through me. I truly had no recollection of this
magnifcent woman walking around the church while she sang. I
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could not have been more than about four years old at the time, but
Silas would have been about eight old enough to have that lovely
memory. To me, he was divinely ordered to be at that performance
in Philadelphia, and to connect me with our beloved grandmother.
She was speaking through me then. She speaks through me now.
My mother, Janie King Norman, had that singing spirit in her
as well. She sang all kinds of songs, most of them Spirituals and of-
ferings from the church. She taught me to sing one or the other of
them, for programs at the church, or at Girl Scouts, or wherever I
would sing in the community. She had such a beautiful voice. As a
young woman, she performed frequently for church and commu-
nity functions with three of her seven sisters. As a group, they were
well known around Washington, Georgia.
Songs were my mothers friends her confdants. They ac-
companied her while she did whatever she was doing during the
course of the day, from tending to the many details of running a
busy household, to keeping the fnancial books of the church, to,
it seemed, serving as the secretary for every organization of which
she was a member. It was from her that I learned a true apprecia-
tion of music and of the beauty of flling the whole house with it. It
was with her and through her that I felt free to sing with as much
joy and power as was within me. I was never told that I should be
quiet.
If you ask me outright, I always say singing and speaking be-
came a part of me at the same time. My brothers had a lot of fun
teasing me about this. Soon, they laughed, youll be telling ev-
eryone you were singing in the womb. All joking aside, I cannot
recall a period in my life when I was not singing when music was
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